A different game of Allspark finding
by The Fish with no pen
Summary: AU, humanized TFs. In the far future when the race of Cybertronians were stories to the space going humans, a new chapter of Cybertron's history is going to bring them along for the ride in the search for the Allspark.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** No Own No Sue.

**Warnings/Notes:** I have joined the ranks of humanizing the TFs, though of course I couldn't do this the easy way on this and just do Cybertron=Alternate Earth or such, no it decided it wanted some convulted reasoning that will slowly be looked at through the fic on why the TFs are human sized and shape now...that and oh I went and made it in the future too. We'll see how this bunny will go if I don't get mobbed for the crap I do in this fandom already.

It's also going to take a lot of Movieverse elements/characters and smash it together in a blender with G1 characters and themes as we go along.

* * *

It had been days since we had picked up that soldier, and all it's done so far is creep out my entire crew. Well the ones that aren't salivating over themselves at the tall broody mystery that the guy has down to an art. Probably the only reason they're doing so, since, for a soldier, he isn't what comes to mind with that word. The muscle mass isn't of the caliber of can squeeze a melon in crook of the elbow, actually if it wasn't for the easy way the guy carries his gear it would almost seem like a high school kid pretending to be a grunt in his father's uniform. Though, the uniform isn't ill fitting in the least, and just screams able to pass an inspection with the stiff lines of starch and completely lined bars and ribbons. The guy has a pretty face to off set this, if you're into sharp cheek bones and bone structure that with any weight loss would look gaunt quickly, and always stuck in this stoic looking expression.

The guy is silent too. I think I've heard only about four words out of him, and that was at the pick up point. He tends to just stare at some datapads or move around the ship, and scaring the shit out of everyone because even in steel toe boots the man doesn't make a damn sound even when walking. Makes you want to just hate him and be done with it, but aside from the mute treatment he doesn't do anything really assholish. Helps out if he can and manages to deflect the few of the crew that like the combination of silent, blue eyes, black hair, and pale features. A feat in of itself as not once did he ever do so with words or in a way to be interpreted as rude; which made a few more keen on tupping the guy into their bunks I half suspect. Especially as we don't even have a name for the guy, the one on the name label of his uniform in some odd language none of us have seen or gotten a translation chip for, so he's just been the guy or soldier boy. He certainly hasn't given any sort of name to be called by and seems content to be called every odd ball name we can come up with.

Orders are orders though, and we're getting paid enough to take two vacations to the Arlian Cosmic resort and have credits left over. So despite the curiosity burning about and the few idiots who think with body parts and not their brains at times, we leave him alone.

"Hey captain, we picked up a weird signal. Think this is what this is all about?"

"Put it up and we'll see."

I wasn't surprise when nearly all the crew not on duty suddenly gathered into the main communication room. The vague orders we were given probably wandering through all our minds at this point. Even as a familiar red symbol popped up on the screen; and by familiar I mean it only was because the red face like symbol was on practically everything the mute little soldier had with him, even stitched onto the left shoulder of his uniform. Then the symbol moved back from covering the whole screen and more of those odd, artistic symbols looking like the ones on soldier boy's name tag scrolled by, before a language we all could read took over after that.

"Oly Oly Oxen Free…What the shit type of message is that?"

"Someone better get soldier bo-JESUS, do you have to be that goddamn quiet?"

It was like a rendition of the parting of the red seas as their 'package' appeared and silently moved forward. People getting out of his way unconsciously, despite most being physically able to bench press the guy with one hand, as the overly bright blue eyes kept staring at the flashing message. A slight quirk to the normally stone faced visage making a few people choke on air in surprise or twitter a bit if they were of the vapid sex driven sort. I almost could think the guy seemed…relieved?...at seeing this message on the screen. Then the man did something else to send most of my crew into strokes of shock, he politely asked my comm. guy for an open line on that transmission. I probably should give the guy a small bonus as he didn't stare slack jaw at this but did as he was told even as he wore a 'holy shit' look of shock on his face. Then it just got fucking weird after that.

"I did not believe the game had ended?"

Okay, the guy had a smooth voice that was easy on the ears. I'll give him that, especially when he managed to make a voice with barely infliction of emotion sound comforting and nice like that.

"The players have forgotten what they were playing and have gone away."

"And what of your Mother who should take you home then as well?"

"Gone away, and the path has become dark."

"Have you no candle?"

"It was lost to the Wolf long ago."

I was used to convoluted code words and double meanings in transmissions, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the conversation I was witnessing as the slightly high pitched voice and that dead panned one from soldier boy went back and forth a bit more.

"Did she not teach you to never talk to strangers?"

"I never talk to strangers; the Wolf has taught me that."

"Then it seems I should bring to you a candle to light your way, if Mother does not come back in time."

"Then the old fort of childhood should be clear."

And like that it was over and the message went back to repeating the four words over and over again in several languages and that red face quietly spinning in the corner of the screen. Even as the soldier boy handed the mike back over and thanked my comm. guy for letting him use it. Before turning those blue eyes on to me and casually pointing to the screen once more. All of us turning like children to see and blinking as the message was now replaced with coordinates to some place out in the middle of the bum fuck edge of the galaxy. A place that was said to have had life at one time, depending on how drunk the source it was giant sentient robots or human sized cyborgs, but that had ended eons ago. Hell nothing was out there but a black metal planet, that one could tell died before humans had even learned that fire was bad but good at the same time.

I was starting to see just why this mission had such a tantalizing price tag on it, because if this was going to end up like I was thinking it was, then we are all fucked.

"I apologize for the inconvenience I am about to ask of you Captain. Of you and your crew, but that transmission is what I have been seeking. It is imperative that I make it to those coordinates; if it seems too much for your crew after that point then I will not fault you if you leave. Our contract is only up to my deliverance on the surface of that world."

Either the polite bastard was a cunning and manipulative sort, and knew such would have my crew stringing my corpse to the ship hull for backing down, or he was just really expecting us to turn tail and flee after dropping him off. Though, our pride not withstanding, more information was going to be needed. I said just as much, even as my crew drew close and the maniacal gleam that made us the crew who would take a stroll through a world of man eating plants for the thrill of it shine through. Even as those really blue, too blue to be human, eyes crinkled a bit in thought at this.

"Captain…have you ever heard of an artifact known as the Allspark?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** No Own No Sue.

**Warnings/Notes:** I have joined the ranks of humanizing the TFs, though of course I couldn't do this the easy way on this and just do Cybertron=Alternate Earth or such, no it decided it wanted some convulted reasoning that will slowly be looked at through the fic on why the TFs are human sized and shape now...that and oh I went and made it in the future too. We'll see how this bunny will go if I don't get mobbed for the crap I do in this fandom already.

It's also going to take a lot of Movieverse elements/characters and smash it together in a blender with G1 characters and themes as we go along.

* * *

There was nothing more then a sudden rumble and the sound of an oddly muffled explosion before optics onlined and the cacophony reached a new level; as the chaos he could only vaguely hear was sharpened and focused with the aid of visual confirmation of the battle happening just past the clear plastic of his stasis pod. The disorientation of newly rebooted systems making him slow to react to it all, just as the pod opened and a black glove covered hand suddenly appeared in his sight and yanked him roughly out of the pod. The flash of a blue visor the only thing his still muddled cpu could grasp on as being familiar while he was dragged and turned to dodge the hail of fire coming from behind them now as they moved.

"Well you picked a fun time to finish reformatting there."

The voice jarring the last of his loose circuitry into place made him give a shaky grin at the saboteur who was now mostly guiding, instead of dragging him down the various hallways as his feet became steadier underneath him. Jazz's manically cheerful grin answered him back as they both skidded around another corner, the sound of guns discharging and various explosives being set off now a barely there background noise as the hallway abruptly ended and they waited. The blank wall suddenly rippling a bit before a passage was shown past the reinforced holomatter projection. Both of them moving quickly through, and into the barely lit area before the sudden harshness of several video screens caused their optics to fritz for a moment as they adjusted to the sudden change in lighting. The form of a young blond haired teenager, dressed in oddly bright yellow and black clothing moved towards them in a stance of relief, even as the pistol in his hand never wavered from covering the passage behind them. A smile and quick hand gesture and once more they were moving through doors and hallways until they came out once more into a hangar. The gleaming silver of one of the more popular cruisers an almost welcome sight. Alongside that of the large forms of a man in red and blue, and that of one in all black with a sizeable cannon prepped and waiting for something to shoot.

"Optimus Prime."

He grimaced a bit at the static that was laced into his voice from disuse as he saluted the towering red and blue form of his leader.

"Smokescreen, it's good to see you well, but what has happened to the rest of your unit that was supposed to be here?"

Smokescreen never got a chance to answer Optimus as a sudden explosion managed to rock them all. Even sending Ironhide to tilt a bit into the side of the ship as his cannons once more swung around for a target.

"As much as I would like to give my report sir, this may not be the best of times."

There was no argument of his statement and the group swiftly moved into the cruiser. The sight of Ratchet in his white and red medical uniform swiftly barring down on him was actually a welcome sight as the rest prepared for the takeoff. No one speaking as they managed to bypass the bulk of the impressively sized fleet, all that for a group of ten autobots, that was in the process of destroying the small orbital outpost completely. Smokescreen wasn't certain if he should feel awed by the desperation or terrified by it.

"You're cleared; nothing was knocked out of place from your abrupt and forced awakening sequence. So, yes Prime you can now ask him all the questions you want."

Ratchet's rough tones brought them all back from their thoughts and watching of the destruction being caused once more by Decepticons. He didn't even wait for Prime to ask again, the many vorns of having worked with Prowl making it easy to compile a verbal report without needing to be prompted.

"Sir, about two solar cycles after communication was lost we came across some information that was heavily encrypted. We only managed to decipher a small bit that we could not properly use to decipher the rest, as it was also written in an odd form of code we have never seen before. Alongside this small bit of data, a string of coordinates were also decrypted, and a small team volunteered to be part of an advance scouting mission in the event the coordinates were a Decepticon base or anything else that would be useful intelligence. The chance of it also being a well thought out trap was also considered in Prowl's decision and in the mind of those who volunteered. About an orn after the team had left we lost contact with them, but the last transmission we received was a warning to us about a Decepticon force heading in our direction. We knew are position had been compromised, but the means of such is still unclear."

"So you stayed behind to act as a diversion while the rest scattered in hopes to find out how they found out."

Smokescreen didn't even pause or look at the Weapons Master who was now eyeing him. Even as a hand unconsciously went to his side.

"Correct, I was the best choice to keep the automated holo projectors going and thus recording and transmitting of any data that triggered a set of keywords that Tactical Officer Prowl had left. We didn't expect a friendly force to come upon the location or for the Decepticons to be interested in the deep stasis pods, considering most placed within them. Considering their lack of compassion for the mortally wounded of their kind, and prior experiences of them not seeing the use in popping the lock on the DSPs even for someone to interrogate; it being a known factor that our group only have the barest of field doctoring knowledge the suspicion of someone who was not near death being placed in the pods would be lessened as well."

"It was still risky and surprising that Prowl allowed you to do such. However it is good that everything went well."

"Considering what we did manage to figure out, it was actually the best option and would have been protested if Prowl had attempted to stop the advance team or the routes for our scattering."

"Smokescreen…what did you find?"

"What may be information about the Allspark and its location."


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** No Own No Sue.

**Warnings/Notes:** I have joined the ranks of humanizing the TFs, though of course I couldn't do this the easy way on this and just do Cybertron=Alternate Earth or such, no it decided it wanted some convulted reasoning that will slowly be looked at through the fic on why the TFs are human sized and shape now...that and oh I went and made it in the future too. We'll see how this bunny will go if I don't get mobbed for the crap I do in this fandom already.

It's also going to take a lot of Movieverse elements/characters and smash it together in a blender with G1 characters and themes as we go along.

* * *

Sam Witwicky had not been an adventurous sort when he had been a child. More of a little geek who liked to look over the family records and imagine the adventures safely from his room, this going into his teenage years as a fact for why people kept pushing him towards careers of history and engineering when he started delving into the notes of the ancestor he was named for. He had found it interesting and it seemed the right thing to look at, even as he didn't really see himself in the jobs his parents, and even Miles pushed on him. So it surprised them, and even himself, when he ended up becoming an apprentice to an architectural engineer on a jack of all trades fleet. His parents probably would have dragged him kicking and screaming off the ship if they had half a chance, but Grapple had charmed his parents and whatever sort of spell he used didn't wear off until it was too late. Leaving him to instead deal with the hysterics and heavy sighs of messages sporadically sent back and forth between him and them over this. Mixed with the slightly spastic ones of Miles as he bemoaned the workload he was getting as he went for his pre-med qualifications and demanding Sam to send anything really exotic to him so he could brag about his best friend's adventures. Even if said adventures were made up, as he and Grapple tended to be part of the 'home base' crew and never really left the ship outside of their monthly off time when they docked somewhere between jobs.

Not that it was boring being the ones who minded the ship when the rest were out. He and Grapple had their hands full, even when they were not butting heads with the pure engineers who left mending the hallways and crawling into the ventilation shafts to them, as they tried to keep the outdated engine from blowing them all up. This was definitely not a luxurious job in the least. He had fun though with it and he had become best friends with one of the mechanical medic apprentices. (He still was wigged out over how many people actually had mechanical hands and other body parts on the ship, and you couldn't even tell.)

Oh when he first met Mikaela he had the biggest crush on her, which wasn't that unusual if anyone saw her. She was smoking hot and considering she was learning all the aspects of being a mechanic along side the normal medical procedures, made her no slouch in the brain department. He and his goofy and awkward personality and she with practiced ease at seemingly anything tossed her way, managed to hit it off after their first meeting. Something that still made him wince and call himself stupid mentally as he had literally ran into the side of an open door before jumping back and falling over a crate of spare parts. He had thought for the longest time this would turn into a relationship, and she didn't seem that adverse to it. So they had dated, for all of five days before both of them had met in the middle of a hallway and agreed they both felt like they were dating a sibling. Both giggling and making fun of this revelation they went back to just being friends, even as they would randomly make jokes about their small stint and what this may or may not do to their sexuality in the future.

Grapple wasn't bad either as his boss and teacher. Even when he had to wait for him to get out of whatever funk he was in when one of the other crews did something stupid and shot a hole in the wall, or destroyed a model of a future project. Some of the old hands calling it an artistic funk due to the pain Grapple had for detail in everything he did. When he wasn't in such a mood he was insightful and quick witted, keeping Sam on his toes, and seeming to genuinely care about the awkward teenager he had taken in. Taking time to explain things that had flew past his head at speeds that probably made a nice whooshing sound when it did.

Even the crew, being made of such an odd bunch of characters as it was, actually got along quite well like, some off the wall family. Even if at times Sam felt like he should hide in his room until the tempers that got set off were cooled, because he never wanted to get shot at as much as he did when he did go out into public when a feud was going on. The sound of bullets going off randomly had by now been ingrained into his system that he could duck and cover like a champ.

It was scary at times and even though he was still not up to par with any of the actual fighters on the crew, he had learned to swing a wrench in a flailing fashion that he could get by. Yet, it was never really all as exciting as he had been led to believe by the stories and rumors that he and Miles used to here back home.

So he could only really wonder what he had done to change that.

It had started out with a normal problem, of the space jump calculations once more crashing and thus setting a random string of coordinates into affect. As the captain had a bad habit of forgetting to double check that before initiating the jump sequence, Sam always felt one day that was going to have them ending up in the gravitational pull of a sun or something else equally horrific. This time, as the pure Engineers started their normal yelling over their channel and cursing the captain in various languages that may or may not be made up, they found themselves circling an oddly dead looking planet that seemed to be made entirely of blackened metal. Most of the crew only giving the dead planet a quick glance before returning to their duties as they attempted to restart the engines. Only, Grapple seemed oddly disturbed by the sight of the planet and it's darkened surface. The man seeming to work at double his normal speed that left the rest of them playing catch up when he would stop to stare at the planet again, as if expecting some monster to pop up from it and eat the ship whole. Even when Sam asked about it, the answer really didn't make sense to him considering Mikaela told him during a shift change that some of the crew were talking about how the planet had supposedly been dead for thousands of years now.

"Some things aren't as dead as you would think boy, and I don't want to find out what may still be crawling around down there. Especially if it takes an interest in us."

After that, the last thing Sam remembered was the alarms sounding, Grapple shoving a small pouch into his hand as they both ran for the escape pods. The sound of lasers and explosives nearly deafening and then running into some blond haired guy that had the same creepy bright blue eyes that Grapple had, before something connected with the back of his head after Grapple asked the new guy to get them out of here quick.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I wish I owned.

**Notes/Warnings:** Well we're finally getting explanation for everything involving why the hell the TFs are 'human' so to speak. Sooner or later we'll actually get into some action and not just talk. Even if the entire time I was writing this chapter I kept picturing it in comic format, just because the images amused me.

* * *

The shattered ruins of Cybertron were still the same even after several eons of the world being abandoned. Then again, even at the height of activity and prosperity very little had ever actually changed amongst the bright buildings and history outside of names and positions until the war. They as a race had gone stagnate early on and stubborn in their ways, which many believed was what caused the rift that would spark the war. The well to do not wishing to do anything to breach the social gap between themselves and the masses below them. A typical cause for civil war, or just war in general, no matter the culture or species involved with it. What made the war amongst Cybertronians different was the great lengths the war brought about as it began to creep into millions of years of battles with no sign of stopping.

Resources became scarce and all sentient species on other planets close to the warring one of Cybertron either fled or were also caught up and eradicated in the war. Only young civilizations on the edges of the galaxy untouched due to distance and lack of information that would make such a journey worthwhile for either side. Thus neither faction were prepared or aware of the threat that soon came to attack both of them.

The Quintessons had attacked swiftly and brutally. Causing both sides to scatter and retreat into the darkness of space. Their small numbers and lack of resources making the task to repel the Quintessons, even if they had worked together, a near impossible task due to the state they were all in. So they fled into the deep areas of space but only found brief respite as the Quintesson forces methodically hunted them down. Like single minded drones in their conquest to 'regain' what they believed were rogue slaves of theirs. Denying the fact that the Cybertronians were far from mindless and had their own will in favor of calling them mechanical slaves that had a rogue program error.

A race that had once been nearly ten billion had decreased to that of barely five hundred, and still they fought one another and this new threat. Taxing resources already scarce and near gone. The complete annihilation of their kind seemed to be at hand. Until the frame type that can only be translated well into Pretender was created. These smaller frames, with heavy modifications and odd programming, took less to keep fueled and far less materials to maintain and repair. At first the though of moving into such was met with a great deal of resistance, especially with hostility still swarming about them, but soon both sides were scrambling to perfect and upstage the other in modifications and strength of these Pretenders. The final lock in the cage of Cybertronians casting aside their much larger bodies and assimilating or hiding away from a new species that was slowly making their presence known through out the galaxy.

The Quintessons had no need for humans, and thus none for those who hide in plain sight amongst them.

* * *

Captain Lennox or Will depending on how much trust there was between him and the one addressing him, had listened to the tale that had been pretty much a vague legend and fairytale since his grandfather had been a child. Part of him was already thinking it would only take a little effort to throw the 'package' out of the air lock if this was some monumental joke on all of them, but the dead serious look and the slight and subtle play of emotions as soldier boy recounted the history as if it was personal knowledge stayed those angry thoughts. Even as a great deal of his crew began to murmur and whisper amongst themselves until it sounded like an angry thrum of some large insect hive.

"See, they wouldn't believe you, and now we can just ask them to finish the original objective and get on with everything. I still can't believe you thought to trust them with even the _name_ of what we're looking for, they can turn on us and run off with it to the Decepticons if you let them go along!"

The panicky alto that filled the room had made a few people jump in surprise and start looking for the eavesdropping stowaway and possibly shooting him. While another part of his crew had taken offense to the slander upon their names and trustworthiness.

"It is tactically the best advantage we have Red Alert, and our mission parameters state the finding and securing of the Allspark is to be accomplished by any means necessary."

There was only an answering snort at the calm and emotionless response from their package which made not more then a few eyebrows raise up in suspicion and question. The guy seeming to be talking to thin air before those oddly bright blue eyes turned towards him and a wry smirk appeared on that face. The normal blank look making more sense in Will's head now if everything this guy had said was true and he wasn't really human and that there was nothing but metal and circuits underneath that fake skin.

"My apologies Captain, but I have also been keeping another vital piece of information from you regarding this job you have taken. For the package you are supposed to transport and protect is not myself as I have lead you to believe…"

And here the Pretender, robot, or whatever it was he was calling himself brought up a hand, palm up and uncurled his fingers. There was then a flicker of light across the few dust motes that were swirling around, and a small human appeared standing in the palm of the man's hand. The face looking up at him with large electric blue eyes was guarded and completely filled with suspicion. Even as the tiny arms crossed over a thin chest and a hip was jutted out to put the body at an angle for a boot covered foot to tap impatiently in the palm of the hand. The young adult, for despite the surly disposition and current look, Will could tell the human hologram was in the age between eighteen and twenty-five, even as the curly red hair and the stylized antenna on the headset being worn made the impression of someone a lot younger playing dress up. Especially with the red and white version of the uniform that the soldier guy was wearing, though his was in black and white, seeming to be slightly too big for the hologram that was still trying to glare him down.

"But this is the actual package. Red Alert, Cybertronian Security and a tactical intelligence commander for the Autobot forces."

"_Prowl!_"

The soldier didn't even flinch at the shriek of that name and instead walked over to Will and promptly dropped the hologram into his own hands. Much to the dismay of both hologram and human captain, even as said human captain was trying to not have an eye twitch when he felt actual weight in his hands, and thus the resulting and appropriate pressure as the hologram scrambled in his hands to regain some dignity. Now it sat in his cupped hands and attempting to gain whiplash from alternating its glare from him to the newly dubbed Prowl.

"Okay, barring the whole giant transforming alien robots who downgraded to human sized transforming alien robots, where the hell does this guy fall into this?"

Will would have probably grabbed the far too realistic and real feeling hologram with two fingers to shake at Prowl for emphasis, but he didn't want to possibly need some sort of shot if the thing bit him or something.

"Some of our number did not take well to being transplanted into Pretender frames, so instead they have managed to modify their base coding and such to allow themselves to become fully assimilated within a viable machine as a complex program instead. What you are currently holding is a hard light representation of Red Alert who is currently upon a memory storage chip within my central processing unit."

"Interesting."

Will ignored the ranting about protocol and security breaches the little hard light hologram was starting to spout, even as his hands suddenly had to curl a bit to keep the slightly twitching and pacing holo from accidently falling out of his hands. The rest of his crew trying to get a look at the guy and listen in more as they could just see things getting far more interesting from here on out if they did stick around with these two.

Which, of course was a guarantee just on the fact it would make this Red Alert spazz at them all more, and the promise of things potentially going 'boom' along the way.


	5. Interlude 1: Skyfire

**Disclaimer:** Still don't own.

**Notes: **For those playing at home may have noticed that in the drop down selection for chapters that this is not chapter five but interlude 1. The reason? This damn 'verse decided to get even more complicated. So instead of just the plot threads and various little groups doing things to move the actual story along, it's now also creating muses who are basically just there to monologue aspects of the universe at me. (I think I've been playing to many video games and their subsequent need for documents/audio logs that give backstory to fill in plot holes or expand the game universe, and thus have incorporated such as these pieces into the overall universe.) It's probably better then even more people trying to get in on the actual plot itself of this thing.

**Summary:** Skyfire had a lot of time to think and observe, and actually sees the good in humanity and their mimicry of said species.

* * *

"_All right soldiers! This is the culmination of all of your training so far and the last step to see if you're going out there to help fight this war or be reduced to excess baggage. It's also your last chance to turn around and join the A.I. program if you still can't hold your lunch at the sight of carnage."_

He remembered in the beginning how a lot of Cybertronians on both sides had fought and resisted the idea of mimicking the now dominant organic life form roaming about the galaxy. Dominant in that once the ability to travel the galaxy was in its grasp it spread out in such quickly swelling numbers that they and other races that had been space faring since before that race had evolved out of the primordial ooze of its planet were taken completely by surprise; and dominant in that when another race shoved back and did not relish the idea of talk and negotiation this little organic race fought back. Showing an odd sort of superiority in combat even when all odds were stacked against them. War minded and violent the first assessment until you saw that they were like that because their entire existence was sculpted by their own world pitting itself against them at every turn. They were war minded to survive and when they manage to gain a foot hold in their fight against the very planet that bore them, they had aggression hard wired into their very being that they soon turned it towards one another.

"_This Unit 034 sigma you're clear for planetary drop. Don't let the S'ians shoot you down before you can fight back."_

It's why many of us who studied this race when creating the first prototypes of the Pretender module saw as the very reason they have survived as they have and could probably one day have held their own against us as well, even before the Quintessons. Their sheer stubborn will to live and thrive even when all parameters say they can not making them far stronger then any alloy produced. To go on even when those in front of them fell to the conditions, finding a new way around to go further then the last. An ever changing and fluid race that refused to remain static for long, even when a vast majority would become comfortable in a state of non-change a few would shake everything and set the race as a whole back into the fast movements of change. Not always would the change be good or progressive for the race, but even their failures were brilliant and opened new roads for them. Challenge was their very reason, and creativity a stepping stone and tool in their hands. Aspects that we ourselves had slowly began to lose as we settled into a state of slow stagnation and rust. Cybertron comfortable and docile with how it was, causing those who were not satisfied with everything to chafe and grow restless at our halt in progress within ourselves and out of ourselves.

"_Flag Ship Relic is reporting a large number of unidentified energy signatures entering orbital pull. Possible bogeys coming in your asses there, watch yourselves."_

In the beginning and with hindsight the civil war we labored under could be attested to this fact. Neither side truly right or truly wrong in those first few vorns of revolts and political infighting. What was truly the crime and sin that both sides carry in making it escalate to what it is now is that neither side was willing to compromise. Both believing to be impeccably right and the other to be grievously in error in their views and to give concession to the other was to admit complete defeat. Leading to a sudden black and white view of both sides as the polar opposites of ideas became the strong point of the factions. Our basic need for adaptability, despite our inherent programming of mimicry had become so obsolete that we nearly destroyed ourselves just because we could not think of change in a positive way or that change could not be done in small and subtle steps, but in large and grand schemes that would destroy what we once knew to make way for the new. It and the war made us lose a part of ourselves as a race.

"_We're pushing to sector delta now, give us some back up out here would ya."_

It was why I believe we took to our newly revamped mimicry with such enthusiasm once we bypassed this coding loop of fearing change. Replicating humanity and its ability to change so much yet still retain itself as a collective whole was like finding something we had lost. For we were once more in a situation we had not been in since as far back as even those like Kup could remember. We were in a position of being both predator and prey, and all the instinctual abilities that came with such. As a sentient autonomous race of machines that could dwarf many of the numerous organic species in the systems we had traveled, the caution and ingenuity that one can only appreciate when one could one day be hunted had become an obsolete and oftentimes purged bit of inherent coding. A fact that became even more obvious in logical deduction at the advent of the Quintessons once more appearing before us outside of the most dated archival records and hushed stories. We were in a situation that we logically knew was not in our favor, but on a more emotional and instinctual level it did not truly dawn upon us what their arrival entailed. We did not have any proper fear of them and what they could do to us, thus we were not as cautious or inventive when it came to our encounters with them.

"_Would you hang on a goddamn minute, I only have two hands and about twenty bleeders here, ass."_

It nearly cost us our entire race, and we only saw what truly brought that about when we began to saw life how humanity saw it. A dangerous and ever changing place that could be a comfort and paradise that would swiftly change to painful and worse then even our own religious lore of the Pits within a single intake of air. Their finite lives compared to us, though they have in their sheer will to survive are slowly bridging even that gap of a lifespan with each new turn of the century; know just how easily their existence can be taken away. Yet, despite this it has not once made them shy away from that which could harm them, instead it has only made them more determined to face that which could erase them from existence. Defying such to prove even that can not stop them if they can outwit or outlast it. We believed we were creative and in essence we were, but we still followed formulas and mathematical probability. We did not do something inherently at random or attempted to make something implausible a plausible outcome just for the fact that we could. Compared to humanity and their emotional processes, we were cold and far too logical in comparison. We were muted where humanity was loud, and tactile sensory only made it that much of an obvious thing. Though we prudently retained our non biological reproduction coding in lieu of perfecting our mimicry that far. Though we did not take into account the emotional tangle that humans ensnared themselves in for just pure interaction with like minded or their sheer need to avoid true isolation.

"_We've got contact, lots of fucking contact in the northwest quadrant."_

Perhaps this is why amongst the various energy signals and free flowing data I watch, bodiless these humans we have mimicked with more care then should be warranted for my mission. Before I became a Program and in essence became a free roaming A.I. with awareness I had no qualms in spending millions of years alone within the confines of space, and now I can hardly last a few years alone with no contact. Even if that contact is merely myself observing humanity as it lives, fights, loves, and dies, in that simple yet complex way that they have created. A fascination even before as Cybertronian scientist would have been seen as inefficient once enough data had been collected to work out an algorithm to predict future behavior.

/Skyfire. This is Springer, you got a new assignment that isn't just sitting and watching for 'cons to slip up. How fast can you get to the human settlement of Aios?/

Humans have one constant, and that is war. However, that constant may perhaps help us end our own war and move on to rebuild. After all, they have fought one another and everything that has challenged them and still thrive to this day. Something in their version of programming allows them live and prosper despite this and we must one day find it and learn it as well.

/I can be there in two cycles, less if I hit a transport ship's communication array./

/Good, hope you don't mind running interference. The war is about to pick up again on both ends if the chatter I'm getting from Hot Rod is anything to go by./

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**End Notes:** Okay after a taste of these, would anyone want me to keep adding them in or should I just leave them on my lj instead? Actually is anyone even actively reading this, or is this just one of my pet projects that I should just label as being done just for my own amusement?


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